CEVA-MM3101

Leading device OEMs (smartphones, tablet computers, portable media players, portable gaming consoles, etc.) are looking to differentiate their products from the competition. One way to achieve this is by providing unique and innovative applications such as image enhancement in low-light handling, sophisticated Natural User Interface (NUI) like Gesture Recognition, Augmented Reality (AR) and depth sensing.

The Automotive market is on the move. Various regulations and technology changes are pressing more and more cameras into this space and related technologies such as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) applications and Human Machine Interface (HMI) applications are being included in newer models.

In the Surveillance market, while the cameras becomes more and more intelligent – most of the video analysis is done online and not on the server and requires massive computer vision support.

The home entertainment market, the emergence of Digital Televisions is driving designers to support state-of-the-art capabilities such as gesture recognition and face detection, recognition and beautification. These devices also need to provide enhanced encoders for video conferencing and special post-processing functions for display.

Other emerging markets like Wearable devices also have a requirement for low power consumption, yet look for flexibility during product development. A flexible solution that answers the power and performance requirements is crucial for the product success.

CEVA-MM3101 IP platform enables these and many other complex computer vision applications while using its extremely efficient performance and low power capabilities to execute multiple applications in parallel.

The CEVA-MM3101 offers a scalable solution that can support a wide variety of products and use-cases. CEVA-MM3101 is augmented by a robust set of full product algorithms coming both from in-house as well as partners technology. The design of imaging and vision applications is accelerated by a full set of software libraries, software tools including CEVA-CV computer vision libraries and ability to offload the CPU by a dedicated framework.

By offloading the device’s main CPU and the GPU/GP-GPU for performance-intensive imaging & computer vision processing tasks, the highly-efficient CEVA-MM3101 dramatically reduces the power consumption of the overall system, while providing complete flexibility. Algorithm developers can leverage the CEVA-MM3101’s programmable architecture to implement their own proprietary software, thereby addressing unique use-cases and providing exceptional functionality that truly differentiates their products.

Multi-Image Super-Resolution

The CEVA Super-Resolution (SR) algorithm increases quality of still images for mobile devices. In today’s world, where smartphones are the most commonly used camera devices, image quality is still limited due to slim form factor and strict power constraints. Super-Resolution is an important breakthrough, enabling systems manufacturers and OEMs to increase the quality of images on any device, regardless of these factors.

Digital Video Stabilizer

The CEVA Digital Video Stabilizer (DVS) is an advanced software application that is able to handle both shakiness (in multiple axes) and rolling shutter effects to output smoother video streams in any light conditions for embedded devices such as smartphone, tablets and others.

Architectural Highlights

At the heart of the CEVA-MM3101 is an efficient & programmable Vector Processing (VP) engine. The Vector Processor performs filtering and the vector-type operations required for pixel processing. It is based on a dedicated pixel-processing VLIW/SIMD architecture with 10-stage pipeline. It contains 7 different units that can work in parallel enabling flexible combination for different type of instructions. All instructions are conditional execution using predication optimized to save code size. The VP can handle 32 byte operations in a single cycle and contains special instructions which can be configured in order to create proprietary filters for video and imaging processing. This strong processor is optimized for multimedia operations, capable of 64 SAD calculations in a single cycle as well as producing 8 results for 6 Tap filters – which make it ideal for imaging algorithms.

With built in techniques for reducing data bandwidth transfer from the DDR to the core and vice versa, and unique patents for data folding and processing on the fly and enhance internal memory structure, the VP can handle large amounts of data for burst mode image pipeline requirements as well as HD video encoding and decoding without hurting its performance. The VP architecture was specifically designed to meet the low-power requirements of mobile and home entertainment devices. Supplied with optimized kernels for image pre and post processing it enables CEVA customers, partners and 3rd parties to develop their own proprietary applications easily and rapidly.

Target Applications

The CEVA-MM3101 can be used in SoCs that offload application processors (APs) in mobile devices, automotive, surveillance applications and home entertainment systems. Computational photography is happening and requiring intensive performance with flexibility to try new algorithms and adopt them quickly and easily.

Camera enabled devices required image and video enhancement as well as support for scene analysis functions such as face tools (detection, recognition, and beautification), motion detection, gesture recognition, and object detection. The different devices equipped with more than one camera – from 3 in smartphones and more than 6 in future automobiles – requires advanced algorithms like stitching and registrations.

The CEVA-MM3101 addresses all of these functions for the most demanding applications, including rich computer vision library (based on OpenCV) with optimized kernels for CEVA-MM3101 platform. The CEVA-MM3101 can be easily integrated into any SoC using its simple interface between the host CPU and the CEVA-MM3101. For example the CEVA-MM3101 equipped with Android interface framework which enables fast and easy integration to Android-based systems.